The All-Hearing

Summary

The All-Hearing shows two local sheikhs delivering sermons on noise pollution in Cairo at the artist’s request. This unorthodox intervention into the sonic landscape of the ‘loudest city on Earth’ followed on from the military regime’s attempts to restrict such sermons to government-sanctioned topics (that week, the Prophet’s Ascension to Heaven). Cutting between close-ups of the sheikhs’ idiosyncratic addresses and wide shots of their congregations and the loudspeakers amplifying their voices in the streets outside, Abu Hamdan’s images show how the sheikhs’ message is disseminated in a way that contradicts its content.